FIFTEEN MINUTE
INTERMISSION: DESSERT, FRUIT, COFFEE AND TEA WILL BE SERVED

ACT TWO

SCENE 1 IN THE STREET

SCENE 2 MELCHISEDEC’S HOME IN THE
GHETTO

SCENE 3 IN THE STREET

SCENE 4 IN THE STREET

SCENE 5 UPSTAIRS IN THE TOLOSINI HOME

SCENE 6 UPSTAIRS IN THE TOLOSINI HOME

SCENE 7 ELSEWHERE
IN THE TOLOSINI HOME

SCENE 8
IN THE STREET

SCENE 9 UPSTAIRS IN THE TOLOSINI HOME

SCENE 10 THE HOME OF GIROLAMO AMIERI

SCENE 11 THE HOME OF ALAMANNO TOLOSINI

SCENE 12 IN THE STREET

SCENE 13 THE HOME OF AMBROGIO
BORDONI

SCENE 14 IN THE
STREET

SCENE 15 IN THE STREET

SCENE 16 MELCHISEDEC’S
HOME IN THE GHETTO

SCENE 17 IN THE STREET

ABOUT L’EBREO:

A world première, no less! This rollicking comedy— with a Jew in the
title role—was written for the Carnival of 1614 at the Medici Court, by
Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (great-nephew, heir and namesake of the
celebrated painter, sculptor and architect).

“Think Molière,” says Tony Gallo (’93), who is directing the staged
reading, “but better!” Buonarroti (1568-1646) and Moliere (1622-73) were both
intrigued by the Italian commedia
dell’arte, with its manic energy, exaggerated characters and preposterous
conflicts. But what is a Jew doing in the midst of this comic mayhem—especially
a Turkish Jew named Melchisedec (“King of the Righteous”), with a turban, a
long robe and a hennaed beard?

“1614 was a wild time in the Tuscan capital,” Ed Goldberg explained,
“especially when it came to the Jewish population. Rich Sephardic merchants
were arriving from the Ottoman Empire, forming a small but exclusive circle in
the local ghetto. With their exotic dress, foreign manners and evident wealth,
they seized everyone’s attention—in the streets of Florence and at the Medici
Court.”

Edward Goldberg is a Washington native with a Ph.D. from Oxford. For most
of the last forty years, he has lived in Florence, exploring public and private
archives. Along the way, he published various books and articles, including Jews and Magic in Medici Florence and A Jew at the Medici Court (both
University of Toronto Press, 2011).

What about Michelangelo the Younger’s play, L’Ebreo (The Jew)? Goldberg discovered the autograph manuscript in
the Casa Buonarroti, that family’s historic palazzo,
only a few blocks from his own home. In scene after raucous scene, we see
Melchisedec—a classic Levantino (Jew
from the East)—surrounded by boisterous characters from the commedia dell’arte: impetuous young
lovers, overbearing elders, riotous servants and gossipy neighbors, plus a
pompous lawyer and a scheming marriage broker. We watch them trip over each
other’s feet in the mad whirl of the Florentine Carnival, the annual silly
season between Epiphany (Twelfth Night) and Lent.

“Melchisedec is the ultimate anti-Shylock”, Goldberg observed. “Ironic
but good-natured. Always in on the joke.”“Buonarroti was far less tolerant, when it came to lawyers,” Gallo noted
with a laugh. “If there are ‘bad guys’ in the piece, it’s them!”

Brilliant and lively, richly evocative of Late Renaissance Florence, L’Ebreo (The Jew) seems like a
guaranteed hit. So, why did it have to wait four hundred years for its début on
the world stage?

“No one could read it!” Goldberg sighed. “Buonarroti abandoned L’Ebreo as a scrawled draft, with a
dense overlay of cross-outs and rewrites. Thank God for high-resolution
photography! Thank God for image-enhancement!”

With L’Ebreo (The Jew),
Goldberg faced a triple challenge. First he had to retrieve the author’s own
words. Next, he needed to delve beneath layers of revision to reveal the play’s
dramatic core. Only then could he shape this material into a performable
script—in English—while preserving the sound and sense of the original.

About Me

Edward Goldberg is an art historian, an archival sleuth and a long-time resident of Florence. Along the way, he achieved a PhD at Oxford, taught at Harvard, founded the Medici Archive Project (MAP) and published many articles and books. These include Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage (Princeton, 1983), After Vasari: History, Art and Patronage in Late Medici Florence (Princeton, 1988) and—most recently—Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis (Toronto, 2011) and A Jew at the Medici Court: The Letters of Benedetto Blanis 'Hebreo', 1615-1621 (Toronto, 2011).